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Mobile phone covers in the design of the wall at Muzeum Metro station, t-shirts of the Dancing Building and face masks featuring Klatovy’s historic Town Hall. These are just a few of a collection of Czech-related products featuring designs by Angela Mantilla that are now on available to buy via the Red Bubble service. I spoke to Mantilla, who is from Colombia, on the phone from her home in London.

The Czech government has sharply rebuffed threats from China over the ongoing visit of a Czech delegation to Taiwan led by Senate speaker Miloš Vystrčil. The closely-watched talks on the island have also won support from international leaders who have called on China to observe the principle of mutual respect.

At the start of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Václav Havel was a 53-year-old playwright, essayist, and political dissident whose works had not been staged publically in Czechoslovakia since his blacklisting after the Soviet-led invasion in 1968. While the late president is revered worldwide as a stalwart champion of human rights, at heart the unwitting “philosopher king” was a dramaturg. Havel often said he wanted nothing more than to be left in peace to write. In this edition of The Czech Books You Must Read, we look back at his literary legacy.

One of the city’s famous landmarks is Loreto, a Marian pilgrimage site not far from Prague Castle, with a Baroque Church of the Nativity and a replica of the Holy House surrounded by cloisters and chapels. It is best known for its Baroque carillon and the Loreto treasure with its diamond-encrusted monstrance aptly called the “Prague Sun”.

The speaker of the Czech Senate referenced John F. Kennedy’s famous “I am a Berliner” speech in an address to Taiwan’s parliament on Tuesday. Coming soon after China said Miloš Vystrčil would “pay” for visiting Taiwan, the gesture seems likely to rile Beijing further.

Three young architects in Brno have established a business based on recycling plastic waste from nearby cafes. Discarded plastic cups, pet bottles and food containers are transformed into tables, shelves or trays for take-away coffee that find their way back to the cafe they came from.

Despite the recent surge in the number of new Covid-19 cases, the new school year is due to begin in the Czech Republic on the usual date, September 1. Schools around the country will be reopening on Tuesday after several months of distance learning following the first coronavirus outbreak in March.

The National Museum in Prague opened perhaps its most significant exhibition yet on Sunday. Under the title “Kings of the Sun” it depicts the age of the pyramid builders in Ancient Egypt and features a priceless collection of nearly 300 never-before-seen objects, 90 of which have left Egypt for the first time.

Today a successful travel writer, Dom Joly is perhaps best known for the hidden camera comedy show Trigger Happy TV, an enormous hit in the early 2000s. But a decade or so before that he spent an eventful year here in Prague, working as a diplomat with the European Commission when Czechoslovakia was going through a period of major change in the early 1990s. Joly discussed his time in the city, an experience he clearly looks back on with true fondness, in a Skype interview from his home in the UK.

It emerged this week that the American pharmaceutical company Novavax will be using a plant near Prague for the production of a vaccine against the coronavirus. The vaccine is set to go into trial production in October ahead of full production next year – and should be tried out on Czech volunteers in the final test phase. Czech Radio’s Petr Dudek spoke to Novavax CEO Stanley Erck about the company’s plans.